Hot Pot

Chongqing is said to have been the birthplace of hot-pot. It is a famous dish that now is served all over China.  On Saturday evening, we headed out to a hot-pot restaurant with the other NAU faculty. The restaurant was built on a hill, and there were 1,000 tables at the restaurant. Next door, was another almost equally large restaurant, and scattered all over this area were too many Hot Pot restaurants to count.  We took advantage of our Chinese host who expertly and graciously ordered the food and drinks.  Plates upon plates arrived with a variety of foods. Some of us tried tripe, long stripes of intestines,  and blood cubes, and other stuck with meatballs, sliced meat, vegetables, and cuttle fish. It was good that we sat by a window and that we had lots of liquids to drink. It is purposefully named hot pot.

When we left the restaurant, it was dark, and the lights were all on. It reminded me of a Christmas village complete with the bad traffic that tends to back up as people stare at the lights. Here they were too busy trying to get out of the parking lot to bother looking at the lights, and we walked to the main road faster than the people could get there in their cars.